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Lest we forget, and are doomed to repeat our mistakes.

I’ve known my internal compass is busted for decades. That little thing inside you that influences your decisions and general direction in life? Yeah, mine has the navigational power of a toddler. Historically, it has manically swung around in nauseating circles as I’d rush off to passionately investigate the next shiny thing that crossed my path, leaving me seasick and irritated with myself. Even though my screwy internal GPS has always led me on completely wild tangents into swampy depressive quagmires and hailstorms of blinding panic, I still follow the stupid thing.

Case in point- I stumbled across an old blog post today from 2011, almost exactly five years ago. I had written it during a 50-ish day period of sobriety, when the extent of my self-awareness pretty much maxed out at, “Hey, I’ve been drinking almost every day for like, a decade. Maybe I should attempt slowing this down.” At that point, I decided to give sobriety a small and vaguely pathetic attempt; sort of like a new kitten experimenting at walking, graceless and clumsy. After some time, I found I was actually enjoying it- I felt inspired again, and my passion for all things non-booze related was rekindling, making me motivated and productive. Then, on the evening of my husbands 32nd birthday, we determined it would be a fine idea to “reintroduce alcohol back into our lives”.

Brilliant! Let’s bust through all the tried and true testaments involving recovery from addiction, and call only occasional excessive drinking “achieving balance”! Lets dangle that carrot, and choose to only have a nibble once a week as a testament to our ability to make skillful, mindful decisions!

I was looking for any way to continue to have booze in my life, and I was good at finding fresh excuses to drink. I am a master at self-deception. My brain is tremendously talented at concocting believable justifications, and I just gobble up all the BS my mind will formulate. The decision to start drinking again was not exactly an outlier of senselessness- my life has been peppered with similarly hilarious little life decisions. Dropping acid in ninth grade science class? Awesome! Crowd surfing and moshing at a punk show packed with huge, angry dudes wearing spiked gauntlets? Sweet! Moving alone to New Orleans only to end up pan handling on Bourbon street in order to pay for another night at the hostel and buy more cheap vodka while my father is 1,000 miles away dying of a wasting disease? Let’s do it! And I’m not kidding when I say that each one of these little gems I believed was best for me at the time. If it wasn’t about determination to live as fully as possible before I die, it was about learning valuable lessons from each absurd, irrational notion I fancied at the time.

“If I am an unfurling flower, opening to the sun of clarity, then alcohol is the closing of my petals when night falls. It achieves the opposite of opening myself up, but that is an important learning tool in itself.” Yeah, like that. A quote from young Erin, delirious with self-made vindication. I prattled out my stream of consciousness defense of drinking in this blog post, fulling believing myself capable of dissolving my alcoholism into normal, acceptable parameters by sheer power of will. Admittedly, that would have been pretty amazing if I could have disciplined myself into sobriety, but “moderation” is not a word that those with addictions really jive with. It’s not an ability we possess in spades. I gave myself permission to drink when I deemed “appropriate”, which opened the door to bargaining, rationalization, and thus, unnecessary suffering. I attempted to “achieve balance” with alcohol as part of my life. This was probably a noble cause, but in the end, the state of inebriation is the polar opposite of mindfulness. Obviously, this was another brilliant plan doomed to fail.

Today I am 50 days sober, again. This was as long as I had made it before. Right now I don’t feel the desire to drink, because in my mind, that option is no longer even on the table. This may change as the days ebb and flow, but I see myself a little more clearly this time around. I have a lot of work to do on myself, a lot of proving to myself that I am capable of self-trust. I really betrayed myself. But I’m learning greater confidence with each obstacle faced.

I can’t bring myself to wholly regret this stupefying path through alcoholic idiocy, because after all, if the irresponsible, undisciplined actions weren’t very wise, at least the reasons for self justifications were. I was learning valuable lessons. I was coming to understand my limitations and values with each mind-numbing decision. Through trial, error, horror, and humiliation I have found myself turning inward more deeply than I ever have, and the clarity that comes with each revelation is worth all the pain and heartache. I can say with complete confidence that I cannot justify drinking any more, because I absolutely exhausted every avenue of rationalization to be had.

I tried that. It’s time to walk another path.

​I’ll close with a fabulous poem by Portia Nelson that I received in early recovery:

I walk down the street.There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.I fall in.I am lost... I am helpless.It isn't my fault.It takes forever to find a way out.

I walk down the same street.There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.I pretend I don't see it.I fall in again.I can't believe I am in the same place.But, it isn't my fault.It still takes me a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street.There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.I see it is there.I still fall in. It's a habit.My eyes are open.I know where I am.It is my fault. I get out immediately.

I walk down the same street.There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.I walk around it.

I walk down another street.

-Portia Nelson, There's a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery